17 November 2017

The road was basically like this the whole day.

The road from Chigorodó was totally flat, plus, we had a tailwind, so we really had no excuse to be going so slowly except that it was our first day back to touring on loaded bikes. We did decide to stop and visit a banana plantation, which set us back a few hours.

One of the many roadside stands selling handmade bags, hammocks, drinks and snacks

Uraba is dense with banana and plantain trees, and for a good portion of our ride, we had been passing these plantations. After passing so many, Lenin stopped to talk to some kids on the side of the road, and they agreed to show us one of the plantations. We walked with them across the street and started down a long dirt road surrounded by rows of banana trees.

One of the boys tries to help by pushing my bike through the mud.

This walk definitely brought our average pace down, but it was worth it. After walking for maybe a mile, we turned off the road and onto a narrow trail between more rows of trees. We even had to cross a few streams, carefully balancing with our bikes over skinny planks of cement. Running along the row of trees was an overhead track, that was part of a network of tracks connecting all of the rows and aisles throughout the plantation. We finally arrived at the processing plant, where a huge conveyor belt was rising up and dropping bunches of green bananas onto a mountain of more bananas. Apparently, these were the rejects that were not fit for exportation but would be sold to Colombians.

We observed the entire process of banana processing, from the branches that get pulled along the tracks to the last conveyor belt that carries the boxes of cleaned, cut and stickered banana bunches into the trucks that would haul them away for exportation. The factory workers even let us try pulling the stalks that arrived in waves from somewhere within the plantation. The tracks all converged back at the factory, and bananas could be coming from as far as 2 or 3 kilometers. From there, they were cut into manageable bunches of 5 or 6 bananas and dropped into an enormous vat of water to be cleaned. They floated across the water vat to the workers who would support out which ones were good enough and which were the rejects for the concept belt I had seen when we first arrived. The good ones get dropped into another water bath, floating over to more workers who put stickers on them and add them to plastic bins on another conveyor belt. Each bin pauses for a few seconds while the conveyor belt takes them under a glass box where they get misted with a mineral that prevents them from ripening too quickly. Then the conveyor belt continues and the bananas get transferred from plastic bins to cardboard boxes, which get loaded into the waiting trucks. The bananas we watched were bound for Europe. Before leaving, we gave some money to the boys who had led us to the factory.

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Back on the road, we didn’t get very far before it started raining, and we ducked under the cover of a furniture maker that happened to be along the side of the road at the time. They were making bed frames, tables and chairs out of teak, which is another common crop of the region.

We had only completed 38 miles before stopping in Turbo, a port that is projected to grow to be one of the country’s largest, due to its proximity to Medellín. Shortly after arriving in town, a friend of Lenin’s from Uramita pulled up on the back of a motorcycle and greeted him. We followed Tata to her grocery store, where she led us into a small, air conditioned office and had one of her employees bring us fresh juice. Shortly after, Tata drove us to a restaurant near the port so we could share lunch. Fish is plentiful and cheap in this region, and we would eat it nearly every day while touring along the coast.

Back at the grocery store, Tata invited us to stay the night at her house, so we loaded our bikes into her pickup truck and rode with her in the direction from where we came, backtracking several kilometers. On the way to her house, Tata pulled in front of a butcher shop and started ordering meat, calling out over the blaring music to the butcher from her window. After several exchanges of meats and money, we were off to her house.

Tata lives in a nice house outside of Turbo with her three kids, her sister, and two women hired to clean and cook. Her husband has been in prison for the past two years, and Tata was preparing to visit him the following morning. I helped her and her sister pack basic dry goods like oats, coffee, sugar, and crackers into clear plastic bags to bring to the prison. Tata goes to visit every week, but this week she had another family member joining her, so she could bring an extra portion of all of the food she usually brings for her husband. The extra bags would be for her husband’s cell mate so he doesn’t have to share half of his food. While their family doesn’t live too far away distance-wise, their family rarely ever goes out of their way to visit them in Turbo, so sadly, Tata is normally her husband’s sole visitor.